A cleaning body is described in German Utility Patent No. 7 612 130. In the patent, the ridges have an identical cross-section over their entire length; they are arranged close to one another and separated from each other by perpendicularly incised channels. They consist of the same material as the cleaning body and have a correspondingly high flexibility. When encountering adherent solid dirt laterally, a lateral buckling is often observed, which makes little contribution to detaching the dirt and subsequently removing it. Besides, the already detached dirt components which penetrate into the interspaces between the ridges have a tendency to become fixed therein. They are hard to remove.
Another German Patent No. 27 30 266 describes cleaning bodies in which a plurality of isolated protuberances are arranged on a flat surface in close proximity to one another. Such cleaning bodies do not make it possible to wipe off a surface to be cleaned without leaving streaks. Further, the resistance of the protuberances to buckling decreases with increasing height. Thus, to remove adhering dirt, it is necessary to make the height of the protuberances very low. However, in so doing, an impairment of the dirt uptake capacity of the interspaces must be reckoned with.